Looking at pictures
There are no atheists in CAT scanners – or are there.
Katja Wiech is a cheerful young German researcher who is fascinated by pain. She’s discovered many things—for example, when devout Catholics are given electric shocks while looking at a picture of the Virgin Mary they feel less pain than atheists do when administered the same unpleasant treatment.
Mary; that’s interesting. Not Jesus, not God. (Showing people pictures of God is a little tricky of course. There are a few – that Michelangelo one of course, where God and Adam attempt to do a fist bump, and some medieval ones where God wears a mitre and looks eminently unSpiritual – but not so many that there’s a stock visual ‘God’ the way there kind of is a stock visual ‘Jesus’ [long hair, beard, blueish robe, pale unMediterranean skin, simpy look on face], so it would probably be hard to show subjects an unmistakable ‘picture of God’ whereas it’s easy with Mary. That’s iconography for you.) Mary is the intercessor, she’s supposed to be the forgiving one, the compassionate one – so is she more effective with pain? So is the effect more to do with the religious aspect or with the compassionate aspect? I wonder if the same effect can be induced with atheists via secular pictures if they are of the right kind. Pictures of Obama for instance? Mandela?
It would be interesting to know.
Pictures of litters of little cute infant mammals? Kittens? Puppies? Otters? Humans?
Is this the kind of thing that might numb the nerves of philosophers?
No, I think it would be right up the alley of experimental philosophy!
Wiech must have tested something like this, I should think – Nigel said she’s discovered many things, and anyway surely the idea of testing non-religious Good Things must have ocurred to her. Obama, fluffy bunnies, baby elephants; she must have tested something secular.
“Chemistry requires test tubes, history needs documents.”
Yeah, history needs documents alright, proper documents and not those that include a picture of the Virgin Mary.
Or for that matter an armchair gone up in flames.
The otherworldly professors should remain sitting in their comfy Oxford armchairs and speculate on the nature of the reality of the blessed Virgin Mary.
Well, at least for this trial the control picture was ‘‘Lady with an Ermine” by Leonardo. Apparently the agnostic/atheist group had no experience whatever viewing that image. No blips on the MRI. But they did report that they didn’t like the Virgin image.
No reports yet of Virgin M v the Cute Baby Animals.
The best news, though, is that the researchers know where religion comes from – no tablets, flashes of lightning, or glowing dirt. It’s just the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex firing. No big deal.
http://www.cienciahoje.pt/index.php?oid=27921&op=all
“Katja Wiech is a cheerful young German researcher who is fascinated by pain.”
I’m saying nothing.
“Mary; that’s interesting.”
Yes. She had no role in the creation of the universe, yet she can intervene in it?
Betcha pornographic images work better than Mary, though.
“Mary; that’s interesting”
Well in the context of “devout catholics” would she not fit in nicely and play a pivotal role in their every day lives? From their perception, she is afterall, almost there at the top with Jesus.
Mary is a big fan of the pope and is a million euro industry around the world.
She is not to be taken lightly not even in a philosophy experiment.